How To Draw A Nose

This film will teach you how to sketch a nose. This is a typical pencil drawing exercise for beginners, to help you practise the positioning and proportions of a nose within a face.

Step 1: Positioning

To get the nose in the right position on the face, start by drawing a face roughly in the shape of an upside-down egg, and then draw guidelines to divide the face into three sections. Draw the guidelines so they're curved to the bottom, and draw them faintly so they can be erased later. The top two sections should be roughly equal in size. The bottom section should be about half the size of the other two. Draw another guideline vertically down the middle of the face.

Step 2: Drawing the nose

Noses vary a lot in size. To draw quite a narrow nose, start at the top guideline and draw a line downwards quite close the vertical guideline. Let the line curve outwards, away from the vertical guideline, as it approaches the bottom guideline. The bottom guideline represents the top of the mouth, so allow a space between the bottom of the nose and the guideline. Draw the bottom of those as a short line curving upwards. Draw two more curves to represent the flare of the nose. Where the curves meet, fill in the space to represent the nostrils. Draw the top of the nose curving outward to run into the top guideline where the eyebrows will be. You have now drawn the proportions of a nose.